The Marte pendant with the turquoise, hanging from the grey silk cord

Collection Marte·Pendente

Oxidized silver Marte pendant with an oval cabochon turquoise and a diamond in a gold bezel setting

Name: Oxidized silver Marte pendant with an oval cabochon turquoise and a diamond in a gold bezel setting
Brand: Anna Gioielli
SKU: PA222bturc
Price: 400.0 EUR
Availability: InStock

A tenth of a gram of gold in the whole pendant, and all of it is in the setting of the single diamond.

€400,00 PA222bturc

Drawn and built by hand at the bench, in Tosi.

The turquoise is an oval cabochon, pale blue and domed, polished without a single facet: the light does not go in, it stops on the curve, and towards the top a paler veil passes through it. It is held by a closed silver setting, a smooth ring that runs all the way round and folds over the edge of the stone: it is the only regular line on the piece. Everything else is silver opened into irregular voids — branches crossing over one another, round and oval holes of different sizes, tips ending in flattened beads — and no void is like the one beside it. The recesses stay black, the raised areas are re-polished: the design comes forward by contrast, as in all the Marte pieces. Above and to the left of the turquoise, wedged between two branches, sits a single diamond, lifted on the claws of a yellow gold setting: it is the only point of gold on the pendant. At the top the bail is of the same pierced silver, and a gray silk cord runs through it.

The pendant measures twenty-two millimeters by sixteen. Sixteen grams and eighty of silver at nine hundred and twenty-five thousandths make the body, the bail and the fittings of the cord — the end caps, the clasp, the extension chain and the round plate with the lily that can be seen in the photographs. The eighteen-carat gold is a tenth of a gram: a hundred and sixty-eight times less, and it is only in the setting of the diamond. The natural brilliant-cut diamond is three points of a carat: it is not a stone that weighs, it is a stone placed off center, beside the turquoise rather than above it, and it is there to break the symmetry of everything else. The turquoise is stated to be natural. It remains a soft, porous stone — it scratches easily and drinks in whatever it touches — so the pendant comes off before creams, perfumes and detergents: a blue that goes dull does not come back.

The material

Weights and carats as the workshop declares them.

16.80 gramsSilver 925‰

0.10 gramsYellow gold 18kt 750‰

0.03 carats Diamonds · one, above and to the left of the turquoise

Metals: Silver 925‰ · Yellow gold 18kt 750‰
Dimensions: Pendant 22 × 16 mm
Technique: Made by hand in the company's goldsmith's studio: the silver modeled into branches and opened into irregular voids, oxidized in the recesses and re-polished on the raised areas; the turquoise closed in a silver setting folded over the edge of the stone; the diamond mounted on claws in a yellow gold setting; the bail pierced with the same pattern as the body.

The stones

Turquoise

At the center, in a closed silver setting

Cut: Oval cabochon
Note: Natural

The diamonds

Natural. Position, cut, carats, colour and clarity.

One, above and to the left of the turquoise 0.03ct Brilliant —Natural diamond, on claws in a yellow gold setting

On white silk: the silver bezel around the turquoise and the diamond at the top left

The pendant and the knot of the cord on the silk

Resting on white stones, with the extender chain laid out to one side

Resting on a dry branch, three-quarter view

Front view on a light background: the irregular openings of the burnished silver and the pierced loop

The whole: the grey silk cord knotted and the pendant at the centre

The pendant on the branch, with the cord running down to one side

Three-quarter view: the thickness of the silver and the side of the bezel

The silver extender chain with the lobster clasp, laid open on the branch

The silver end caps of the cord and the join to the extender chain

The round silver plate with the Florentine lily, at the end of the extender chain

The round-link chain and the "Made in Florence" plate

How it is made

The words of the trade, one by one, explained to those who do not know them.

Turquoise: Turquoise is a soft, porous stone: it scratches easily and drinks in whatever it touches. That is why it is not faceted but shaped and polished into a dome, and why it is set last, on a cold, finished mount: under the flame turquoise turns green, and it does not turn back. Almost all the turquoise on the market is stabilized with resin precisely so that it will take the cutting, the polishing and the setting. Whoever wears it has one rule only: the piece comes off before perfumes, creams and detergents, because acids, cosmetics and heat put its blue out, and blue lost does not come back.
Irregular voids: In geometric piercing the error is measured against the module that repeats; here there is no module, and every void has to be decided as it is opened. The risk shifts: not that a mesh comes out crooked, but that at some point the solid is left too thin, and the piece gives way exactly there. Whoever does it holds together two things that pull in opposite directions, an outline that has to look random and a thickness that has to carry.
Oxidizing: The silver is darkened on purpose, and then re-polished only where the light has to come back. The black stays in the voids and the recesses, the bright on the raised areas: it is a design made by subtraction, and whoever does it decides where to stop the cloth.
Gold and silver on the same piece: Silver melts at a lower temperature than gold and oxidizes quickly under the flame. Mounting the two metals on the same piece means heating just enough for the solder to take without sinking the silver, and cleaning the joint before the black from the flame is shut in under the gold.
Brilliant cut: Fifty-seven facets calculated so that the light entering from above comes back out the same way. It is the cut that makes a diamond sparkle, and the reason a badly cut diamond stays dead.

I don't look at what others are doing: I would rather create in my own style. That is what makes our jewelry recognizable.
Fabio Gori — Anna Gioielli, Tosi

Made for you

Every piece leaves the bench made to order: sizes and details are agreed before the work begins.

The goldsmith's workshop is also the place where made-to-measure jewellery is created and family pieces are restored: if you have an idea, or something you want brought back to how it was, that is where it starts.

Ask for a made-to-measure piece

Made by

Anna Gioielli

A goldsmith's workshop in Tosi, on the slopes of the Pratomagno: Anna opened it in 1988, her sons Fabio and Francesco carry it on. Piercing, repoussé, chasing and burin engraving — the Florentine school, with the workshop in full view of the shop.

All the creations by Anna Gioielli